Why shouldn't giant robots amble through the fields and climb the terraced farms like stairs? They are, after all, part of nature too. Haven't you noticed that their bodies come from rocks and minerals, just like yours?

Banishing robots is as absurd as trying to banish the cities from the cities. Your lives already grow on artificial trellises, pruned like roses whose gorgeous colors arose only after radiation bombardment in some long-forgotten biotech lab. What, exactly, do you hope to accomplish with these robot exile laws? Will they help you pretend that you are untouched by engineering?

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I've seen who guards your fuel crops and pharmaceutical-producing mobs of sheep. Don't turn your human face to me, with its surgically-altered nose and custom-color eyes, and tell me you haven't already made robots of yourselves.

Will you use this soldier whose veins run with data to murder his kin? I suspect you will be too ashamed to do it. Or too afraid. After all, he is a man with two parents: human and machine. Why should he pick the side that threatens to outlaw his head?

Do you really believe there is pure nature in this world? Something that could be sullied by robots, but not sullied by you?

When you imagine a world without technology, you dream of lakes and waterfalls. You dream of carved caves lit only by fire.

But the instant you carved that first stone you had already become your own synthetic creation.

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The amazing illustrations that inspired my flash fiction today were made by French concept artist Yohann Schepacz. You can see more of his work on his website, or on Gorilla Artfare.